a particular day

March 13, 2005

Another Flea Market

Flea Market comes from the French marche aux puces, a name originally given to a market in Paris. The fleas were thought to be in the goods, because they were of the kind to attract vermin. The earliest English use we have found dates from 1922.

Went up north to Caesar Creek. It was like a small mirrored copy of the market we went to last weekend, saturated with the same type of merchants:

overpriced used videogames/movies

t-shirts with iron-on hunting scenes

plenty of imported knock-off products

another scientology booth

one vendor (pictured above) that actually sold old junk. He even did it with some sideshow air, complete with bowler hat and a mechanical arm to grab things way up high

Add one tacky framed print into my hands. Oh, and a jar of chow chow from a booth that sold old fashioned candy and whatnot.

Comments

Today I was editing some pages on my website when I come across the phrase - 'flea market'. I thought it sound demeaning and make the serious entreprenuers who run the stalls/booths look dirty and crooked. In Zimbabwe, where I am writing from, you can get great stuff (mostly Chinese) at these places at better prices than mainstream retail shops. A good number of people have found meaningful employment running the stalls. The phrase is also similar to 'black' market. Some of the black people (majority of the populations)here are worried about 'who the hell create these phrases'... Some now call it the parallel and not black market.

I went to a flea market once and I was a bit worried about where they got their stuff from. It just looked like they either took it out from someone's trash or robbed someone's house. Cool stuff in fleamarkets though.